Keywords

One of the first things you do when you want to optimize your web site for search is to research and choose keywords that relate to your site’s theme or business niche. These keywords are being used by your target audience most frequently when searching for your services online. If you use these keywords on your site correctly, you will increase your chances for more traffic.

But traffic isn’t the end-all be-all of keyword research. No sir. You want keywords that draw in targeted traffic. When this targeted traffic lands on your site, you want them to become engaged with content that convinces them to convert. Visitors who find irrelevant content after clicking through to your site will hit the back button faster than a gunfight at high noon. Make sure the content your keywords link to is relevant and engaging.

So how do you do it? The first step is to create a list of relevant keywords that your target audience frequently uses. You can do this by conducting keyword research tools to find related keywords. Google’s Keyword Adwords Tool is a great way to identify not only most often searched for words, but also other related words that may be a longer string of words. Check out this Adwords screenshot for a Real Estate School keyword search:

As you browse through this list you will see that there are a few keywords that stand out. SEO best practices recommend you look at least two different keyword types for targeting your website: long-tail keywords and short-tail keywords. From my experience, many clients come into the keyword research phase of an SEO campaign without completely understanding the difference between the two types. That is about to end.


Join me after the jump to discuss the differences between long-tail and short keywords. Read more »

When you are building the foundation of your SEO campaign, the choice of keywords you want to target for your rankings is one of the most important decisions you will make. If you choose the wrong keywords, there may never be hope for results. No matter if you are doing all the work yourself or if you’ve hired an SEO firm to do it for you – getting even the best results from the wrong keyword will bring you less than expected traffic.


Throughout the lifespan of Volacci, our IMCs have seen SEO campaigns barely able to limp into our offices for help after being devastated by bad keyword research or decision making. Learn from the misfortune of others and avoid these five mistakes in keyword selection: Read more »

Search engine optimization (SEO) has a fairly steep learning curve, mostly due to the fact that the industry (and Google) is constantly evolving. The rules of SEO have changed since search emerged in the 90’s, as any advice from this era is no longer effective for today’s Web 2.0 world.

There are plenty of SEO sharks, gurus, ninjas, Jedis, and wizards out there that have been at SEO for years and would love to tell you how the experts do it. Some of them do know what they’re talking about. But more than would care to admit are telling you a) old advice that is no longer applicable, b) don’t really know what they are talking about, or c) using ‘black hat’ SEO technique for instant results, but are breaking the laws of Google to get you there. This will only destroy your rankings in the end.

One of the most important aspects of SEO campaigns is keyword research. You want to target certain keywords in order to gain rankings and get found by potential credit card-wielding customers. There are certain techniques you use keywords for when implementing on-page SEO that will tremendously affect your rankings. If you misuse them due to some bad advice, you will be hurting your chances severely. Here are three ways you can misuse your keywords that hurt your rankings more than they help. Read more »

At the beginning of every SEO campaign, keywords and phrases are researched for targeting traffic and rankings. Most campaigns conduct very thorough research, slaving endless hours over Google’s Keyword Tool and mentally battling over whether to pluralize or not to pluralize. In the end, a small but significant list of keywords are optimized for a website with the intention of increasing targeted traffic, search engine rankings, and the always infamous return on investment. But is keyword research a one-time event or an continuing process for your campaign? Read more »

In SEO, using keywords on- and off-page is essential to ranking well in the search engines. Fundamentally, search engines want to deliver the most relevant match to a web surfer’s searching phrase. This is why proper keywords are optimized in both on-page content and in the meta tags. This allows the web site owner to tell the search engines that their site is relevant for those phrases. As the Internet evolves, SEO tactics change with it. Say hello to Keywords 2.0. Read more »

An important element in any search engine optimization campaign is the selecting and targeting of keywords for your site and business. Keyword research should produce a healthy list of relevant keywords with a significant volume of traffic. Once you have chosen your keywords, you need to use them throughout your titles, meta descriptions, and on-page content. Be careful not to keyword stuff and over-utilize a specific keyword. Keywords are not magic dust to be generously sprinkled at random throughout your website. You not only need to use strategic implementation and common sense when plugging in your keywords, but variation as well. Read more »